Many products are packaged in plastic containers and some of these plastic containers have pour spouts or other constructional features that cannot withstand any compression load. The paperboard carton that these containers are typically packaged in for shipment or warehousing, usually does not need divider partitions within the carton to separate the containers because the containers are plastic and will not easily break. However, these paperboard cartons, without any divider partitions therein, will not withstand the necessary compression load for stacking of the these cartons in the warehouse. Accordingly, many manufacturers have been going back to the larger size cartons which are necessary to accommodate corrugated partitions therein for overcoming the lack of stacking strength even though these corrugated partitions are not required for separation of the containers against breakage within the carton. The corrugated partitions take up more room and thus require larger cartons, and the resulting carton is more expensive. Corrugated material also tends to create a lot of dust and tend to be susceptible to humidity.
Prior art divider systems are primarily directed to corrugated dividers for protecting one item from another during shipping. One example is U.S. Pat. No. 3,756,496 to Oostdik. Oostdik shows a divider made from a one piece blank of corrugated material having cuts arranged therein to allow folding of the blank into a divider network. The divider network is placed in a carton and an article to be packed is positioned in each compartment. This type of arrangement, as discussed earlier, takes up a substantial amount of room in the carton. Because of the thickness of the corrugations, the dividers also take up a lot of storage space, even when folded flat.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,272,008 to Wozniacki shows a variable divider using corrugated paperboard or heavy kraft paper for protecting melons of various sizes. Wozniacki, like other prior art devices, uses material having substantial thickness as evidenced by the drawings. This is necessary for protecting the contents from breakage or bruising, but when storing plastic containers, the thick divider takes up a substantial amount of room at a substantial cost.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,335,842 to Bradford et al. shows a compartment divider to provide stacking strength using double faced corrugated cardboard. This divider, like the other prior art dividers, will require the use of the larger carton to accommodate the corrugated divider.
Because of the above-noted drawbacks of using the corrugated material, some prior efforts have been directed to using fiberboard, which is generally less expensive than corrugated board. An example of a divider system made of fiberboard is U.S. Pat. No. 4,361,264 to Philips, which shows a divider system comprised of several interlocking parts. The Philips divider is seen to be very complicated and expensive, defeating one of the benefits offered by the fiberboard. The complexity of Philips is due to the inherent lack of stability of fiberboard, in that fiberboard will bend rather than support if it is not provided with some type of stabilizing structure.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a divider for use in providing vertical stacking strength to paperboard shipping cartons, and which avoids the disadvantages of the prior art constructions as noted above.
It is a more particular object of the present invention to provide a simple and inexpensive divider for use in a shipping carton, and which provides substantial compression strength to permit stacking of the cartons while requiring very little space in the carton.